Rise to the challenge
by blackandwhity
Summary: A shared life, seen through all the tests and challenges that it presents. Tiva, of course.


**A/N Hello everyone! It's been a while. Here is a short story, that I wrote back in June and never published. It's centered around the word "test", since I realized tests and challenges were a constant in the whole Tiva history.  
>I usually focus on short scenes, so this is different from my other fanfics. I hope you'll enjoy it.<strong>

**Dedicated to my wonderful friend Charlie, as it was originally intended.**

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><p>They put each other through a lot of tests during her first months at NCIS.<p>

Trust has to be earned, so they study each other and dig through the other's façade, every day a little deeper. They do it both with the teasing and by watching the other's back in the field. It's a fine mingling of playful and serious that works for them, so that when the team is shaken by Gibbs' departure, they are ready to deal with this new test together and on the same side, for the first time.

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><p>His secretiveness is a trial for her. The ups and downs of his undercover operation are a trial for him.<p>

Two sides of the same coin, but she's on the rear while he's on the front.

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><p>Jenny's death is another ordeal that needs to be dealt with by teaming up, and they would, but they are sent on the opposite sides of the globe.<p>

The loss is amplified, the balance is shattered.

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><p>For the first time, it's their relationship that is put through the wringer.<br>For the first time, trust is gone.  
>It's the first test they fail.<p>

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><p>He fails his personal challenge of living without her, but he's lucky enough to get a second chance.<p>

The whole rebuilding of _them_ is a test itself, and one of the hard kind. The beginning is inevitably awkward, but then they do what they've always done: they team up to fight for it, they take every single careful step together, and they succeed in every stage of the process.

The next test on their path is formally just hers: being examined to get the American citizenship is something she has to do on her own.  
>It doesn't feel that way at all, though. It concerns him too, because he already knows how losing her feels like.<p>

He chooses to disguise his worry under a lot of teasing at the beginning, because that's how he copes with this kind of stress – or any kind of stress, for the matter. And then he gets over it and finds a more constructive way to deal with it, a way that brings the bonus of spending more time with her. He offers himself as a study buddy one afternoon, when he sees her particularly stressed out because she's tired and having a hard time memorizing all the laws and rules and other stuff. She doesn't even resist that long before accepting his help, and he doesn't give her a reason to regret it (that's how far they've come).

A bunch of nights on the books follow, and it reminds him of the time he prepared for his exams in college. Except for the moment in which exhaustion takes over her and she softly rests her head on his shoulder, falling asleep: that's uniquely _her_.  
>A wave of tenderness hits him and makes it really hard to refrain from kissing her on the head and holding her tight. They're not ready for that. Yet.<p>

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><p>Seeing her fall for another man is the real trial. Wanting her for himself and wanting her happy however she chooses to pursue this happiness starts quite a bloody internal war within him.<p>

Seeing him hover around that little blonde pain in the neck wakes a jealousy that she thought she had managed to subdue and forget.  
>She's challenging herself to bury those feelings again in the remote corner of her heart where she put them after the Rivkin disaster. Not very successfully.<p>

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><p>Acknowledging his feelings for her to himself and working hard to be a good friend for her puts him through the wringer, but he makes it. And it pays off.<br>He's there for her through the whole Ray debacle, they stick to each other when their world gets literally blown up, they start to open up.

It looks like the tests are over for them.

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><p>And then it happens, life gets in the way one more time and she's pushing him away. She's not testing his feelings, she's just regressing to her old self because that's how she copes with grief.<p>

There are several bumps on the road, in which they get closer, and then she pushes him away, and then they grow closer again, and then she runs away again, memorize and repeat until the end of days. Patience pays off as always though, and they're on good terms when the storm strikes.

This time no one will separate them. This is another test they will pass together.

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><p>The moment they step out of the headquarters without their badges and guns, he knows it's just a matter of time.<br>He's been waiting for her to be stable and at peace, wanting her to come back to him on her own terms, but he's still surprised when she's the one to step forward a few days later. He never pictured she'd be the first of them to break the years-long taboo by saying out loud that her love for him is not just friendly. That she cannot imagine how to deal with life without him. And that it's not unemployment panic talking, she needs him for real, and for good.  
>He still gets to be the one who initiates their first real kiss, though, and that's enough for him.<p>

This is their first happy summer together since Gibbs Mexican sabbatical.  
>It's a new kind of test for their evolving relationship, because they have to reinvent it around them and <em>just them<em>. They don't get interrupted by the job anymore, and they cannot hide in work when a fight occurs. And still, they hold on, find their rhythm, and ultimately make it work.

They are both nervous when they get their job back, because even if they spent years in that office, being there as a couple is a new situation. Their worry turns out to be unjustified, though, because they're both determined to fight for this relationship, and the work in that direction that they started during the summer gives them a strong basis to hold onto.

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><p>It comes natural, a year later, to start talking about children. She dreaded the conversation because she didn't know if he was ready, which might have been potentially a disaster for their increasingly stable relationship. So she's shocked when he's the one to bring it up, and with unexpected anticipation.<p>

Since there's not much to discuss, they go for it once, luck assists them, and there's a baby on the way pretty soon.

Right when they think that they're settled for good, they have to face the hardest test of their history. She has some complications during her pregnancy that put hers and the baby's health at risk.  
>It kills him to see her sick and weak and not being able to do anything other than try to be supportive and being there for her, and at the same time he can't help but feeling proud of her strength and her dignity while she gets in and out of the hospital to keep hypertension and heart issues under control.<br>She never gives up and keeps fighting and holding on, and she relies on him and comforts him and cheers him up every time she sees his mask slip and go to pieces, and all his worry comes to light.

Their daughter is born a little early, but she's healthy and beautiful and just _perfect_, and Ziva fully recovers too.  
>They know it doesn't mean that the challenges of their life together are over, on the contrary, they know that raising Eden will bring a new challenge after another every day, but after all they went through, and most importantly after making it through, they are fairly certain that they will get by just fine.<p>

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><p>In his old age, Tony fears just one thing: that he'll outlive her and experience again what he felt that far summer when he believed she went down with that damn cargo ship. He's older than her, but his health seems to be more stable, for some reason.<br>He prays God, that God he so rarely speaks to, to take him first, because he's not ready to be put in front of such a test. He wasn't able to live without her then, he certainly wouldn't be now.

He doesn't know that she secretly prays to go first too, because she cannot imagine how she'd be able to carry on without him after the intense, happy, symbiotic life they've shared in the last fifty years.

They both get listened. One night they go to bed, and wish each other good night with a kiss like they did every single night for fifty-four years, and then for some reason they feel the need to remind each other their mutual love.  
>In the morning, she wakes up and sees he's gone peacefully in his sleep. She barely has the time to kiss his forehead affectionately, and before the loss can sink in, she falls back asleep with her head on his chest, and mercifully follows him.<p>

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><p><strong>That's it. I'll be glad to hear your opinions, as usual!<strong>

**PS I've lost track of the baby names used in fanfictions, so I have no idea if Eden was "taken" already. I just love this name and its meaning.**


End file.
